


Sing One We Know

by which_chartreuse



Category: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)
Genre: Carole Keen mentioned, Could be post-canon, Drunkenness, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Joel Maisel mentioned, References to S2E10, Sharing a Bed, Someday, Susie Myerson mentioned, Tearjerker, could be canon compliant, references to Pilot, references to s1e1, references to s1e8, references to s3e5, roleplay kinda if you squint?, the other pov, the tearjerker companion piece nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:54:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22445167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/which_chartreuse/pseuds/which_chartreuse
Summary: or,  A Sad Look (From someone who wants to be loved by you)~``~His sleep-clouded expression brings a smile to her face, and she's glad she hasn't left without a goodbye, and that she didn't have to wake him, either. He smiles back, a lazy, easy smile, and she laughs.(someday, I will be murdered for this summary)
Relationships: Lenny Bruce & Miriam Weissman, Lenny Bruce (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)/Miriam "Midge" Maisel
Comments: 14
Kudos: 74





	Sing One We Know

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Stormy Haze (Calm Sea)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22381798) by [which_chartreuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/which_chartreuse/pseuds/which_chartreuse). 



It's been too long since she's last seen Lenny. Long enough to have gotten herself into and back out of some hairy situations. Long enough to have done some thinking, a bit of overhaul in her life. And accidentally-on-purposely stumbling into Lenny Bruce feels appropriate to her current position on the road to success. Their ships always seem to be passing at important junctures. It will feel good, and right, to see him now, she thinks.

She's ready.

But as she approaches his table, takes in his characteristic slouch, the ever-present cigarette, she sees something else. Something she never recognized before. And her thoughts begin to change.

“Oh, Lenny...” She hears his name slip out of her own mouth and she knows how it must sound because he's straightening, crossing his arms, squinting at her through the lazy curl of smoke from his cigarette.

“Don't you start with me, too.” He's scolding her, jabbing that cigarette at her in an accusatory way. “'Oh Lenny!'” He mocks her in a high voice, and makes a derisive sort of grunting noise to punctuate his anger.

But he can't scare her off, not after all this time. She takes a seat, scrubbing the concern from her expression and preparing to trade barbs if necessary. She will get her dose of Bruce.

“What are we drinking?” She asks, light as she can manage, with just a hint of innocent curiosity. It's a tone that would work on Susie about half the time, so it's a dice-roll on Lenny.

He snaps to get the waitress's attention and motions for a round, and Midge bristles just a bit. When two drinks arrive he nods his acknowledgment, but she makes a point of thanking the girl verbally, and with eye contact.

Just because she intends to get drunk doesn't mean she can't show basic decency to the staff.

Lenny drinks deep from his glass, but she feels his eyes on her as she sniffs hers first to determine its contents. Whiskey, maybe bourbon, she thinks. Not her first choice, but a perfectly adequate vehicle for tipsiness. She throws it back.

“How many before I'm caught up?” she asks, hoping for a smirk, maybe, or any crack in Lenny's morose expression, really. He's slightly less angry looking, but still not exuding any great-to-see-you-Midge congeniality.

Alright, she'll just stick with her get-drunk plan for now, she decides. Waves the waitress back over.

“Martinis,” she says, but the girl turns to go faster than expected. Midge reaches for her arm, insistent but gentle, she hopes. “Gin, not vodka, and keep 'em coming.” She re-establishes eye-contact to make sure she's being heard.

Out of the corner of her eye she can make out Lenny slumping into his chair and the concern in her gut pitches up again.

“How's the bartender here?” She doesn't really look at him as she asks, casts her eyes around the bar, not wanting him to clock the anxiety she's wrestling against.

It takes him a beat to respond. “Thorough” he says, and now he just sounds loaded instead of upset and loaded. But it's all Lenny, and she laughs involuntarily. Notes the slight uplift of his mouth at the same time.

The laugh honestly surprises her, and she's glad it doesn't seem to be taken as poorly as her arrival was. The anxiety in her stomach begins to dissipate with a sigh. Everything will be alright, she thinks.

But Lenny doesn't seem to be sober enough for their usual round of dueling wits, so she pushes a little. Raises her brows and prods “Aren't you going to ask how I'm doing?” as the martinis arrive in front of them.

He fishes the olive from his and examines it in an odd way, even for him. He must have had even more to drink than the tabletop evidence would suggest, and he tosses the olive into her glass before responding to her leading question.

“How rude of me... How ever have you been, Midge?” He's testy again, cutting and insincere. Her eyes roll, almost automatically. But he's engaging, just enough, and she'll take it.

So she dives into a recounting of recent gigs and family-life chores, and continues into a blow-by-blow of her recent court appearances. She's had to appear before the same judge who oversaw her first divorce, and she'd been afraid he would tell her to go back to her first husband, she jokes. She goes through her martinis too quickly, but they keep her throat lubricated and her chatter flowing.

It seems her audience is just barely following the threads of said chatter, so she goes deeper. Rehashes some failed dates for him. Recaps Carole's rules of road relationships. He doesn't seem to note the growing heat in her cheeks as she goes over the “no feelings” caveat. So she plows right through to the gun-shaped novelty cigarette lighter she bought herself, half as a joke and half just in case. His eyebrow cocks up at that, so she leaves out the part about Joel buying her a real one before her Chicago residency.

She switches to clothes, knowing that no man can tolerate dissertations on dye-to-match pumps for more than about thirty seconds, and hopes to incite him to cut in. He doesn't, though. He just watches her, and it takes her back. She keeps talking, because... martinis. But in the back of her mind she's somewhere else. Another city, another bar. Locking eyes with Lenny Bruce.

The waitress shows up to collect the glasses that now crowd the entire tabletop, and Lenny finally pipes up. “Coffee,” he says, then with a swift glance between Midge and the girl, adds, “Please.”

Coffee is a good choice, a sober-making choice. There's a certain amount of relief that comes with the return of his voice, and she releases a long breath she hadn't noticed she was holding. She smiles at him, and he smiles back, eyes still half-lidded, customary finger across the lips. But a smile, all the same.

They watch each other over the coffee when it comes, and she feels that familiar pull. _This_ is what I wanted, she thinks.

“So,” she says, with a glance at the time. Late, but there's plenty of it, and she's ready.

“So,” he echoes. “Wanna get outta here?”

“Sure,” she replies. But he doesn't elaborate, so she does. “Let's take a walk.”

She takes some bills from her bag, not presuming to be treated. She's the one who hijacked his drunk, after all. She gets her own jacket, too, never presuming. And it's probably a good thing, because standing seems to have reinforced Lenny's drunkenness. He gestures for her to lead, so she does, but also waits for him at the door.

She takes his arm when he offers it, takes in his dark profile. So cool, with that upturned collar. She clings to him to support them both, and steps out into the night.

~``~

It's late enough to be just a tad chilly, but Midge doesn't feel cold pressed against Lenny's arm. Although her arm is looped through his, it feels more like she's escorting him. Her free hand settles around his wrist, too, and it's nice.

It's nice to walk along beside this man who has been her friend, her sometimes champion, for years now. They walked like this once before, and this time she determines to see the night through to its conclusion.

Although, the way Lenny stumbles to a halt at the street corner, staring over the curb like he's looking over the edge of a sky scraper, makes Midge reconsider their combined sobriety. They still have some blocks to travel, though, once they make it over this curb, so... She'll wait to see.

“You know that expression, 'three sheets to the wind'?” He suddenly asks, making the most intense eye-contact of the night thus far. There's a glint there.

“Yes, I do,” she affirms with a smile and a huff, because he's falling sideways toward her.

He catches himself, and her, before they tumble to the pavement. His arm goes around her for a moment, steadying them both, and the warm anticipation inside her stomach swells. It passes too soon, and their arms are linked again.

“Good, that's good,” he says, with a pat to her arm, and strides into the street like he's taking charge.

His lead doesn't last long, though, and they're soon leaning into each other as before. She can feel his eyes drifting over her as they walk, again and again. It's nice to feel distracting for a while. She usually feels distracting for all the wrong reasons. But it doesn't feel wrong when it's Lenny beside her.

She's glad that she'd bothered to take down his current address at the same time she tracked down his watering holes, though, because he is far too drunk still and too distracted to get them anywhere. So she steers them on.

“I apologize,” he says, as they follow the edge of a park. “For earlier.”

She turns to get a sense of his expression, but keeps them moving. Because if they stop, she isn't sure she'll be able to get them where they're going. His brow is furrowed, and it looks as though whatever he's trying to apologize for is deeply important to him.

“Earlier?” she questions, and notes how his eyes flick to her lips and back again.

“For that unflattering impression,” he says. Winces. “Not even an impression. I apologize for mocking your concern.”

Oh. So her arrival in his life that night hasn't been obliterated by the drinks that followed it.

“I've heard worse.” She tries to sound dismissive, as if his mocking her hadn't caused her to momentarily second-guess her choice to come find him at all. She tries to sound light, but her eyes turn to the ground in front of them as questions re-present themselves. She's grateful for the interlude of darkness between two lampposts because she's afraid her expression might betray how much this all means to her.

“Still, it was rude,” he says. “And I- I _am_ sorry.”

She's still veiled in shadow, so she turns herself toward him, tries to get a sense of what's happening behind those sleepy eyes. But what she sees is a tired man. Still handsome, still someone she recognizes, but a man who's lived more years than she's ever considered before. For a long time, Lenny Bruce has simply existed in her life, but he's also been living his.

She isn't sure she wants to continue down the path her mind is wondering, and refocuses on the route in front of them instead. The hand around his wrist grips a little tighter for the briefest moment.

They walk on in ponderous silence.

~``~

They reach his block, and Lenny's sobriety seems to sharpen. They stop on the front step of his building and he releases her arm.

She sighs, and it feels like the moment of truth. Does she push forward, step out of her life and into his world? Make good on an aging promise? She watches him go through the familiar ritual of lighting a cigarette and offering her one, and that well-worn gesture causes the warm anticipatory feeling to emerge again.

And he's watching her. His eyes are hers. She can feel him appraising her, and she smiles at the attention. It's a feeling she's had before, before she was ready for it. Now, she feels ready.

She watches him watch her, and she feels fond in a way she hasn't in a long time. And maybe that's a strange feeling for the edge of desire, but it works for her.

He finishes his cigarette and turns away.

“I'll walk you up,” she says. He doesn't respond, but he holds the door for her. She follows him up the flights of narrow stairs and feels the anticipation stretching into tension between them, but that's almost to be expected.

He hesitates as he fishes his key from his pocket and fumbles it into the lock, and the tension suddenly blooms back into full-blown anxiety.

“Coffee?” He offers, and it soothes her ever so slightly to hear his voice again. But she walks right in to his apartment anyway.

She walks into the middle of his living space and turns to take it all in. And as she turns the anxiety burns up, the warm anticipation snuffs out, and the thing that escaped from her throat when she saw him in the bar claws its way back out and strangles her.

It's not the clutter, necessarily. She almost expected clutter, if she's honest with herself. It's not the small size of the room as it seems to shrink around her.

It's not even the needle balancing precariously on the arm of the only chair, although that sight does do something to her heart that hurts worse than childbirth.

It's all of it together. The newspapers, the records, the disarray. The drugs. The hand annotations all over every paper as if he's trying to fight the printed words. It's the air of something frantic and desperate living in these walls, and realization that that frantic, desperate thing is her friend.

She's spent the night worrying about either of them being too drunk to act on some romantic notion she's been nursing for weeks, and it's become clear, in this moment, that something else has been feeding on the turmoil of Lenny's life for... months, maybe even years.

“Lenny,” she speaks his name, quiet, and a little afraid, and the sound is swallowed up in the silence of his rooms.

She's told him it would be okay before. She's sat beside him in bars, and stood outside his playdates. She's been _dragged into_ his playdates. She's been as supportive and understanding as she thought he needed her to be in those moments. But she looks at him now and knows that she has been wrong. Not just in Miami. All along.

She looks at him and sees the tired, angry man in the bar cast in new shadows. She sees her memories of a slow dance and a beautiful night begin to flicker, begin to recede. They are no longer a promise of some beautiful meeting to come, some elusive daydream made real. Those memories are just memories. Those daydreams are caught in the glaring light of new understanding, and they're beginning to burn.

And she knows how this realization must be wearing her expression because his is desperate. And he won't meet her eyes. Her eyes, which are filling with tears.

“Lenny,” she calls, because she has to understand. Because she wants to know what it is that's killing him, even if it kills her. Even though her dreams are smoldering in the pit of her stomach.

“Miriam...” Her name sounds like a prayer in his mouth, and she can't recall if he's ever used it before. A tear escapes.

He comes to her, then. He takes her in his arms like they're back on a dance floor in some other place. He's warm around her, and solid beneath her hands, and for an instant she can pretend it's something it's not. But the moment passes, too quickly, and she tries desperately not to cry.

“Lenny,” she breathes into the lapel of his jacket. Then, with a deep inhalation, she turns her gaze to his face and the look she sees there is absolutely heartbreaking. She would give anything to take away the pain, but there is nothing she can do now, she knows.

He presses his lips to her hairline, pulls her a little closer.

She clings to him with all the strength she can muster. She mourns the burning of her fantasies, the memories, the promise of a Someday between them. She mourns the years she spent denying the underlying attraction that was always there. That had been there from the moment Joel took her to that burlesque club. That had actualized when she leapt into his arms at the Gaslight, and again at a Latin club in Florida.

She mourns all the wasted time.

“I'm too late, aren't I?” she whispers, and the tears are beginning to stream despite all her efforts.

His hands slide up her sides and cradle her face, turning her as if to better understand.

“I'm too late for Someday, aren't I?” she elaborates, and the recognition in his eyes is instantaneous.

She sees his answer in the tears that form there.

She is too late, and has been too late possibly from the time she walked away from his hotel. There will be no more dancing, no more quiet flirtation, no more shared looks.

She pulls away just enough to hide her face in his neck, grasps his tie to keep herself connected.

He will not kiss her, undress her, make love to her. She will never live in that dream again. But he holds her while she cries. Until the tears are wrung from her.

She pretends this is enough, and knows it never will be.

“We've always been too late,” he whispers into her hair, and presses his lips there. The gentle pressure makes her unsteady.

“I watched you walk away that night... Watched the sun coming up. I knew it then, but I... I didn't _want_ to believe it.”

His words are a confirmation, and she struggles to keep breathing. She won't survive this night if she cries again.

“Maybe... if we were different people... If I hadn't been Lenny Bruce – or even Lenny Schneider.”

His words set her spinning in the ashes of her precious daydream, her thoughts grasping at wisps of smoke.

“If I'd been...”

“Luke.” She speaks the name and pushes gently against his chest. She looks up at him, fully aware of the sight she must be and not caring. She looks for any glimpse of hope in his eyes.

“- and you were -”

“Margot.” The name comes to her with a dim twinkle of something light, and she feels her lips lift as new tears begin to form.

“- instead of Miriam Weissman. Maybe in that other world, we wouldn't have needed a Someday. We would have gotten the timing right from the start.”

She nods, fully standing in a twilit universe where Miriam Weissman and Leonard Bruce don't exist, even as she stands in his arms in a tiny warzone of an apartment.

“Maybe then...”She whispers. She wants to kiss him, and be kissed by him, to pull the other world closed around them. In the same moment, she knows she never will, and that dream dies, too.

“But I'm not him, and you're not her. I'm Lenny fuckin' Bruce.” His eyes don't meet hers, and there are new tears there. “And you're the marvelous 'Mrs. Maisel.'” He uses her stage name almost affectionately, but- “It's always been too late.”

She feels his sigh brush across her brow, and his lips press against her hair. It's a chaste gesture, an anchoring gesture. She wills the tears away and his hands fall from their place around her.

She stands alone before him, just as she was and as someone else entirely.

He pulls the handkerchief from his pocket and folds what look like small bloodstains to the inside. He wipes the damp trails of tears and mascara from her face as she watches him.

She settles into her emotional exhaustion, into this new person she has become. There's a thought forcing its way up out of her throat.

“Luke.” She hesitates, and she isn't sure who she is or who she's speaking to. The man who is cleaning away the evidence of her heartbreak, or that of a burnt world of possibilities.

“Yes Margot.” He acknowledges her by her chosen name, and she lets the far-off twinkle shine just a little longer.

It's just that- “I'm tired,” she says.

“Me too, baby. Me too.”

~``~

Luke watches Margot the way Lenny Bruce watches a beautiful woman. With a focus distracted only by her beauty. He touches her – gently, briefly – with the same distant familiarity with which Joel Maisel touches his ex-wife.

Margot watches Luke watching her as they help one another out of their jackets. He watches her begin to undress, and she has Mrs. Maisel's poise even as she skirts the edges of a blush. He turns away before Margot is naked, and she watches his back strain beneath his shirt as he unties his shoes and hangs up his tie. She redresses in a strange man's pajamas.

They are still themselves, but they are not themselves.

She's surprised he doesn't slide under the covers with her, just lays himself down beside her. But he's still there, and that's the most important thing.

He watches her, and she catalogs every detail she can, refusing to sleep though her eyes are heavy. When his eyelids begin to stay closed more than they blink open, she reaches for his hand and pulls it up beneath her pillow so he's cradling her cheek. And he's awake a moment longer, expression soft.

When his breathing grows slow and even, she shifts closer, settling as close as she can without touching him, without waking him. She feels heat radiate off of him, and the brush of his exhalations. She fights sleep as long as she can, and when she begins to lose, she brushes her lips against his rough cheek and relents.

~``~

Miriam wakes to the sunlight streaming under the blinds. She's draped across Lenny's side, still wearing his pajamas. His hand rests almost protectively over her arm. She lingers in his warmth only a moment before sliding as smoothly as possible away across the bed.

She dresses quietly, runs enough water to remove the remaining evidence of last night's sorrow from her face, and chooses the best of the five lipsticks in her purse to distract from the rest of her appearance. The spell of Margot is broken.

Lenny doesn't stir until Midge is collecting herself at the door. His sleep-clouded expression brings a smile to her face, and she's glad she hasn't left without a goodbye, and that she didn't have to wake him, either. He smiles back, a lazy, easy smile, and she laughs. And he laughs, shifts up on his elbow, and covers the smile with a smirk and a hand.

She has loved this man far longer than she ever realized, and now she knows there will never be a time for them.

She blows him a kiss and goes before he can see her cry.

~``~

There's a moment, some months later, Midge finds herself spiraling and desperate. She resurrects a charred memory of a dance shared in a delectably moody little club in Miami and clings to a dim fantasy of another world. She orders an engraved cigarette lighter and starts the work of tracking a person down. When the lighter arrives from the jeweler, however, the fantasy begins to sour. She pockets the lighter but is careful never to use it, never to let anyone see.

~``~

Lenny Bruce grows darker, more incoherent, even more political, if that's possible. Mrs. Maisel remains controversial in some crowds, but also becomes a household name. She doesn't allow that they ever be spotted together, unless they somehow wind up on the bill at the same club, but that's rare. Midge can keep it together long enough for a drink and some banter, but no more. When their eyes meet, she clutches the lighter in her fist so hard its tiny hinge bites her skin.

When Lenny leaves her life, and all life, for good, Midge runs. She gives herself a week of disappearance, a week of barely contained insanity, and that's all. Mrs. Maisel does not attend the unconventional memorial service later that month.

The next time Midge plays Los Angeles, though, she slips out to the Valley for several hours one afternoon, and drinks the better part of a bottle of bourbon beside his headstone. She does her first wasted gig in years, and is critically received that night. She is not, however, arrested for it.

When Midge passes, Esther finds the cigarette lighter amongst her mother's belongings. It's engraved:

for Luke,

All my love,

Margot

“Someday.”

It's a curious – but fleeting – mystery Esther never solves. She has her mother buried with it slipped inside her jacket pocket.

**Author's Note:**

> It only took two days for this to happen. No one asked it to, I just did it. It came out fast and painfully, so I have spent far less time attempting to edit than I generally would. But I am still sick, and just exhausted by the emotions that came with this writing, so I apologize for any blatant errors/typos.   
> Coldplay had a larger rotation while I wrote this one, hence the title. Other inspirations can be found in the endnotes of the original piece, if you are interested.   
> Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading. (Thank you mask man!)


End file.
